EARTH SCIENCE

1. EARTH SCIENCE Jan FlaurenceA.Oblenda KharlBanawa Ms. Charity Mulig

2. TASKS • ECONOMIST- JanFlaurenceA.Oblenda • GEOLOGIST- • INDUSTRIALIST-KristofferKharlBanawa

3. SITUATION • A businessman would like to increase his earnings through mining. Learning about his interest in the field, three companies immediately came up with project proposals for three different mineral reserves. Company A proposed for manganese, Company B recommended phosphates; Company envisioned a coal mining industry. However, the businessman, seeing the project to involve a huge amount of money, thought of hiring your expertise as a team MINERAL EXPERTS to help him decide where to invest.

4. MINERAL RESERVES • Company A proposed for manganese • Company B recommended phosphates • Company envisioned a coal mining industry

5. Company A- Manganese • Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature (often in combination with iron), and in many minerals. As a free element, manganese is a metal with important industrial metal alloy uses, particularly in stainless steels.

6. Cost of Mining • In the mid-seventies, a $70-million international joint venture succeeded in collecting multi-ton quantities of manganese nodules from the abyssal plains (18,000 feet, 5.5 km + depth) of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Significant quantities of nickel (the primary target) as well as copper and cobaltwere subsequently extracted from this "ore" using both pyro and hydro methods. In the course of this 8-year project, a number of ancillary developments evolved, including the use of near-bottom towed side-scan sonar array to assay the nodule population density on the abyssal silt whilst simultaneously performing a sub-bottom profile with a derived, vertically-oriented, low-frequency acoustic beam.

7. Market Value of Manganese • Australia is the third largest producer of manganese ore in the world, producing 2.55 Mt in 2003, 12% of global production. In 2003, Australian exports of manganese ore totaled 2.14 Mt valued at A$312 million.

8. Mine Life Naturally occurring manganese is composed of 1 stable isotopeMn. 18 radioisotopes have been characterized with the most stable being Mn with a half-life of 3.7 million years, Mn with a half-life of 312.3 days, and Mn with a half-life of 5.591 days. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 3 hours and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 1 minute. This element also has 3 meta states.

9. Company B- Phosphate A phosphate, an inorganic chemical, is a salt of phosphoric acid. In organic chemistry, a phosphate, or organophosphate, is an ester of phosphoric acid. Organic phosphates are important in biochemistry and biogeochemistry or ecology. Inorganic phosphates are mined to obtain phosphorus for use in agriculture and industry.

10. Cost of Mining • Since independence in 1968, the Nauru government has earned about $A100-$A120 million yearly by exporting the phosphate. Those who own land receive a lump sum prior to mining, and then royalties are earmarked for a trust fund, which is to begin paying out once mining ends between 1995 and 2000. Individuals involved do receive a financial statement, but aggregate island accounts of financial dealings do not exist. The Nauru government figures are sketchy, if not entirely secret.

11. Market Value of Phosphates • Prices for phosphate rose more than 120 per cent in 2008 to around $1000 (€ 777) per ton by end of the year, which has been blamed on “skyrocketing” demand from the fertilizer industry.

12. Mine Life • The phosphates mine has an estimated life of 27 years.

13. Company C-Coal Mining • The goal of coal mining is to economically remove coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s is widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a "colliery". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.

14. Cost of Mining An April index of coal prices from Barlow Jonker, an Australian firm, lists coal of similar quality to that found at Wishbone Hill at $51.15 per metric ton. Two years ago, the same index listed that coal at $24 per metric ton. But shipping prices have nearly doubled in the same time frame, going from $11.15 to $20.50 per metric ton for a shipment from South Africa to the Netherlands."

15. Market Value of Coal • A market capitalization of about $11.4 billion mined 20% of the coal in the United States last year. This amounted to just more than $5.3 billion in revenue.

16. Mine Life Environmental and Social Impact • Coal mining can result in a number of adverse effects on the environment. Surface mining of coal completely eliminates existing vegetation, destroys the genetic soil profile, displaces or destroys wildlife and habitat, degrades air quality, alters current land uses, and to some extent permanently changes the general topography of the area mined. • Mine tailing dumps produce acid mine drainage which can seep into waterways and aquifers, with consequences on ecological and human health. If underground mine tunnels collapse, this can cause subsidence of land surfaces. During actual mining operations, methane, a known greenhouse gas, may be released into the air. And by the movement, storage, and redistribution of soil, the community of microorganisms and nutrient cycling processes can be disrupted.

17. Our Choice • The coal is more valuable in terms of market value than the manganese and the phosphates.

18. Sources • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining • www.minesite.com/.../minews/.../american-manganese-looks-well-positioned-to-benefit-from-increased-manganese-demand-in-the-years-ahe.htm...

19. Thanks For Watching